The Secret of Crickley Hall (69 page)

Suddenly, as if on command, the whirling lights flew high into the air and gathered together in one blazing whole. There the dazzling mass hovered for a moment, then swooped through the glassless window into the bright day where it outshone even the sun. Then it was gone, vanishing rather than flying away.

Gabe was the first to recover. He studied his wife's upturned face and took heart at the joy he saw there. Her eyes shone with unshed tears and her smile was almost rapturous. With Lili and Percy, she continued to gaze out into the daylight as if expecting the lights to return.

At last, Lili said: 'It really is over now.' Her smile had become wistful.

Gabe turned Eve so that she faced him in his arms. He looked over her shoulder at the psychic. 'It's resolved?' he asked Lili. 'They've left this place for good?'

Lili nodded. 'They're complete: there's nothing to keep them tied to Crickley Hall. Augustus Cribben has no power over them any more.'

'And Augustus Cribben himself? Has he gone?'

Her smile faltered. 'I don't know, but I don't feel anything here. After all, he got his eleventh victim.'

'Pyke?'

She nodded again. 'Maurice Stafford. I sense the house is empty for now, although Cribben might not have understood it's time to pass over. His bitterness could still keep him here in spirit, the lesson unlearned, his own evil clouding everything.'

'Then let's leave,' said Gabe firmly. 'Haunted or not, the sooner we're out of Crickley Hall, the better I'll like it. You okay, Percy?'

The gardener wiped a tear from his eye with the knuckle of a finger. 'I am, son,' he replied. 'It's like the young lady says, there's nothing here any more. It's just a big old ugly empty house an' I hope it stays that way fer a long time to come.'

A sound of barking outside distracted them all.

'Gabe…?' Eve looked up into her husband's face. 'That sounds like—no, it can't be.'

Gabe ginned as Chester appeared at the open door, Loren and Cally giggling behind him. The dog waited on the threshold for a second or two, as if uncertain. But as soon as he spotted Eve, he bounded and scooted through puddles towards her. As Chester slavered all over Eve, who had made the mistake of kneeling down to his level, Gabe caught Percy's eye.

Percy gave a reassuring nod of his head. There was nothing here to frighten Chester any more.

EPILOGUES

It was nurse Iris who found Magda Cribben's stone-cold corpse the morning after the big flood had hit the coastal village of Hollow Bay. Although such morning discoveries were not infrequent in a nursing home for the elderly, the nurse had to suppress a scream of fright when she walked into Magda's cell-like bedroom, for instead of lying peacefully in her bed, the old woman was sitting upright and fully dressed on her hard chair, facing the door, her body already stiff as if she had frozen there.

But it was the expression on Magda Cribben's face that upset Iris so: Magda's jaw was dropped, her toothless mouth open wide as if in a rictal cry of horror, and her lifeless eyes remained staring at the doorway—staring past Nurse Iris—as if her last sight was of something horrific entering the room.

•

They never recovered the body of Gordon Pyke, the man who had visited Crickley Hall on the night of what the locals called the Second Great Flood. They assumed that his drowned body had been carried by the underground river out to the sea and then to the ocean beyond. Either that, or it was still trapped somewhere in the underground river, snagged by rocks or washed into some subterranean cavern. After all, two bodies that had been lost since the last world war had only recently been found.

No one knew much about Pyke, so no one cared very much that his body was lost. To the older villagers, he was just another victim of Crickley Hall's curse.

•

Crickley Hall has remained empty for a year now. Potential buyers or those looking to rent are not attracted to the place. Its architecture is too severe, its ambience too depressing, they say. Some even compare it to a mausoleum despite (or maybe even because of) its grand hall.

Even the estate manager hates his monthly check on the property's condition. It's creepy, he likes to tell anyone who is not a possible client. Sometimes he hears noises, he claims. Oh, he knows that most are the usual sounds of trespassing rodents, birds in the chimneys or merely the house settling, but sometimes they are different from all those. Always faint. Always from rooms that are empty when he looks into them. But they are distinct.

They sound like:

Swish-thwack!

Swish-thwack!

Swish-thwack!

•     •     •

There is an old, empty house in Devil's Cleave, a deep gorge that leads from the high moors down to the harbour village of Hollow Bay.

The house is Crickley Hall and it's large and grim, somehow foreboding. It's rumoured to be haunted. It's thought to hold a secret.

Despite some reservations, the Caleighs move in, searching for respite in this beautiful part of North Devon, seeking peace and perhaps to come to terms with what's happened to them as a family. But all is not well with the house. They hear unaccountable noises. A cellar door they shut every night is always open again in the morning. They see things that cannot be real.

The house is the last place the Caleighs should have come to, for the terror that unfolds is beyond belief. Soon they will discover the secret horror of

Crickley Hall…

The Secret of Crickley Hall
is James Herberts finest novel to date. It explores the darker, more obtuse territories of evil and the supernatural. With brooding menace and rising tension, he masterfully and relentlessly draws the reader through to the ultimate revelation—one that will stay to chill the mind long after the book has been laid aside.

£17.99 CDN $36.95

JAMES HERBERT is not just Britain's No. 1 bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held since the publication of his first novel, but he is one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-five other languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty novels have sold more than fifty million copies worldwide.

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Author photograph © Terry O'Neill